Twentieth-Century Polygamy and
Fundamentalist Mormons in
Southern Utah
Ken Driggs
the Manifesto of 1890 did not bring an end
to LDS church-approved plural marriages. It did, however, inaugurate an era of confusion, ambiguity, and equivocation in the Mormon
community. After two generations of bitter struggle and the creation
of thousands of plural families, one could hardly expect polygamy to
simply disappear.
The years 1890-1911 were a period of ambiguity. When the federal government granted Utah statehood in 1896, federal laws regulating families gave way to state laws, and such legislation as the Morrill
Act (1862), the Poland Act (1874), the Edmunds Act (1882), and the
Edmunds-Tucker Act (1887) no longer applied. Although plural marriage was prohibited by both state constitutional and statutory law as a
condition for statehood,1 official enforcement was relaxed. As a result,
DESPITE OFFICIAL DENIAL,
KEN DRIGGS has published extensively on Mormon and legal history topics. He holds an LLM
in legal history from the University of Wisconsin law school. A version of this essay was presented
as the Juanita Brooks Lecture at Dixie College.
1
Article 3 of the Utah Constitution provides "First: —Perfect toleration of religious sentiment is guaranteed. No inhabitant of this state shall ever be molested in
person or property on account of his or her mode of worship; but polygamous or plural
marriages are forever prohibited." Article 1, section 4 provides that "the rights of
conscience shall never be infringed" and ensures a complete separation of church and
state, but has been held not to protect religiously based plural marriage (In Re Black,
283 P.2d 887 [1955]).
Utah Enabling Act, ch. 138, 28 stat. 107 (1894), sec. 3, provides, in part, "First.
That perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured, and that no inhabitant
of said state shall ever be molested in person or property on account of his or her mode
of religious worship: Provided, that polygamous or plural marriages are forever
prohibited."
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
45
Mormons once again entered into new officially sanctioned plural marriages, and existing plural families continued to live together. This
was especially true during the early presidency of Joseph F. Smith,
1901-18. Plural marriages continued to be solemnized both in Zion
and in the Mexican colonies. Moreover, many members of the Quorum of the Twelve during this period were reluctant to grant unqualified support to the 1890 Manifesto, including Apostle Abraham O.
Woodruff, a son of the Manifesto's author. This official reluctance lent
tacit approval to the hundreds of plural marriages — some two thousand according to the Salt Lake Tribune— solemnized between 1890 and
1904. (I suspect their estimate was far too high, but the Tribune
vigorously promoted it.) Historian Tom Alexander noted that "perhaps
as high as 15 percent" of stake and ward leaders had entered plural
marriages after 1890, "often at the urging of a Church leader" (1986,
62). D. Michael Quinn has estimated that fifty thousand living descendants remain of these marriages (1985, 104; see also Cannon 1978a,
1978b).
The selection in 1903 of Apostle Reed Smoot as a senator from
Utah and the four years of Senate hearings concerning his seating
forced Church leaders to again address the polygamy question, a confrontation which resulted in the Second Manifesto of April 1904 (Proceedings 1906; Shipps 1977; Jenson 1971, 178-81). President Joseph F.
Smith said, in part, "I hereby announce that all such marriages are
prohibited, and if any officer or member of the Church shall assume
to solemnize or enter into any such marriage he will be deemed in
transgression against the Church and will be liable to be dealt with,
according to the rules and regulations thereof, and excommunicated
therefrom" (in Clark 1970, 4:84-86). This time the Church meant
business.
In 1911 Apostle John W. Taylor was excommunicated and Apostle Matthias Cowley was disfellowshipped (Jorgensen and Hardy 1980;
Collier and Knutson 1987). However, it was during the administration
of Heber J. Grant, beginning in 1918, that Church officials made concerted efforts to purge the Church of the most zealous advocates of
plural marriage. Among those excommunicated were John W. Woolley,
his son Lorin C. Woolley, Israel Barlow, Jr., his son John Yates Barlow,
Joseph W. Musser, and others who would later play significant roles
in the fundamentalist movement.
EARLY FUNDAMENTALIST LEADERS
It would be a mistake to dismiss early fundamentalist leaders and
sympathizers as a group of crackpots. Certainly LDS apostles John
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DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley were educated, well-spoken, and
thoughtful men. Taylor and Cowley are much respected and embraced
by fundamentalists, but both refused to openly join the movement.
They remained in the mainline Mormon community, and both were
eventually restored to full membership, Taylor some years after his
death (see Taylor 1974, 273-79). Other plural marriage holdouts served
as stake presidents, bishops, and frequently patriarchs. Often they were
from prominent Church families such as the Taylors, Barlows, Mussers, Johnsons, Woolleys, and others.
The family of Leroy S. Johnson, who presided in more modern
times over a large community of fundamentalists based in Colorado
City, Arizona, was fairly typical. He was a son of one of the plural
wives of Warren Johnson, called on a mission by Brigham Young to
replace John D. Lee as ferrymaster at Lee's Ferry in 1874 (Driggs
1990; Measeles 1981). His brother Price Johnson was convicted of
polygamy in Arizona in 1935, one of the first fundamentalists prosecuted in the twentieth century ("Prison" 1935). Within Latter-day Saint
society, these men were powerful, respected, relatively well educated
(especially in religious matters) and could often claim extensive pedigrees dating back to the time of Joseph Smith.
HEBER J. GRANT'S RESPONSE
In 1918 President Joseph F. Smith died, and Heber J. Grant
became seventh president of the Church, serving longer than any other
president except Brigham Young. During his administration, Church
membership nearly doubled. At the same time, Church leaders sought
to mollify public hostility and garner good will by actively and publicly distancing the Church from polygamy holdouts. Although Grant
had been convicted of a polygamy-related offense in 1899 ("Heber"
1899), he was determined to eradicate plural marriage within the
Church community. He delivered stern messages denouncing the practice in 1925, 1926, and 1931 (in Clark 1970, 5:242, 249, 292-303). In
1933 his counselor J. Reuben Clark, a relative of the Woolleys, prepared a detailed, legalistic, sixteen-page "Final Manifesto" (Quinn 1983,
179-81; Clark 1970, 5:315-30). The statement, which was read aloud
in every congregation in the Church, responded to and denounced
fundamentalists, who continued to distribute literature at Temple Square
during general conference.
Shortly thereafter Clark advocated a kind of ecclesiastical "loyalty
oath" that suspected fundamentalist sympathizers were required to sign.
Those who refused faced excommunication. Individuals had to pledge
that they were not themselves practicing or advocating polygamy, or
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
47
spreading rumors that General Authorities secretly condoned plural
marriage in their private circles. Musser published a version of the
oath in the March 1936 issue of Truth, a monthly magazine published
by fundamentalists beginning in 1935:
I, the undersigned member of the Millville Ward of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-Day Saints, solemnly declare and affirm that I, without any
mental reservation whatever, support the Presidency and Apostles of the church;
that I repudiate any intimation that any one of the Presidency or Apostles of the
Church is living a double life; that I repudiate those who are falsely accusing
them; that I denounce the practice and advocacy of plural marriage as being out
of harmony with the declared principles of the Church at the present time; and
that I myself am not living in such alleged marriage relationship.
In 1935 the majority of the small dependent ward at Short Creek in
southern Utah was excommunicated for refusing to sign the oath. Leroy
Johnson and other future fundamentalist leaders were among them. 2
The loyalty oath apparently backfired. Instead of eradicating fundamentalism, the excommunications only created a core membership
around which its leaders could build a more permanent organization.
President Clark himself would come to reconsider this approach later
in life (Quinn 1983, 184-86).
FUNDAMENTALISTS ORGANIZE
In the 1920s many fundamentalists associated themselves with Utah
inventor Nathanial Baldwin. Among those working in his Salt Lake
City radio factory or serving as officers in his business was defrocked
apostle Cowley. Until the business foundered, Baldwin was fundamentalism's most important financial patron (Singer 1979; Bronson
1989). Throughout the 1920s, fundamentalists existed as a loose association of friends and sympathizers from both within and without the
official Church. At first they recognized John W. Woolley, an excommunicated Salt Lake Stake patriarch and temple worker, as their spiritual leader. With his death in 1928, his son, Lorin C. Woolley, assumed
leadership and in 1929 organized the first priesthood council. He was
succeeded in 1934 by J. Leslie Broadbent and in 1935 by John Y.
2
Those excommunicated in 1935 for refusing to sign the oath included Henry E.
Covington, Viva Jones Covington, Leroy S. Johnson, Josephine Ford Johnson,
Leonard Black, Vera Colvin Black, J. Warren Black, Ruth Walker Black, Millard W.
Black, Eda Johnson Black, Charles C. Cox, Retta Stocks Cox, Karl J. Olds, Charlotte
Colvin, Elva E. Walker Carling, Elizabeth Johnson Colvin, Melvin E. Johnson, and
Lola Johnson. (See microfilm records of Rockville Ward, Zion Park Stake, Transcript
Ward Record, 1935, also called Form E. Originals in LDS Archives.)
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DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
Barlow. Each lived in Salt Lake City but ministered to a following all
over the old Mormon Zion.
Following mass excommunications at Short Creek in 1934 and
1935, Barlow and Joseph W. Musser visited the community. A few
years earlier, members of Leroy Johnson's family had moved there
from Lee's Ferry, where their polygamous practices had attracted the
attention of local authorities (Stegner 1970, 209-26). Gradually Short
Creek became both a center of fundamentalism and an experiment in
United Order communalism, although other centers continued in Salt
Lake City and at other outposts in Canada, Mexico, and throughout
the Great Basin.
In spite of this growth, fundamentalism still lacked the structured
hierarchy familiar to most Latter-day Saints. While many fundamentalists looked to the priesthood council for leadership, other
"independents" opposed any structure. Truth, edited by Joseph W.
Musser (and later his son Guy Musser), served as a unifying force
among fundamentalists until it expired in 1956.
In 1949 John Y. Barlow, the man most fundamentalists recognized as the leader of the priesthood council, died. Joseph W. Musser
became the leader of the council even though he had suffered a series
of debilitating strokes and was now under the medical care of Rulon
Allred, a naturopath and practicing fundamentalist. Musser's advocacy of Allred as his successor and other religious and policy disputes
created a rift in the council (Bronson 1989, 202-43; Solomon 1984,
15-30) before Musser died in 1954. Allred emerged as the leader of a
Salt Lake City group, which still exists under the leadership of Rulon's
brother Owen Allred. Leroy Johnson assumed the leadership of the
more traditional United Effort Trust group in Short Creek, now known
as Colorado City, on the Utah-Arizona border. When Johnson died in
1986, Rulon Jeffs, a Sandy accountant, succeeded him.
CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS
In 1935 the Utah legislature made unlawful cohabitation, a
polygamy-related crime, a felony for the first time. Even in the darkest
days of the 1880s, Congress had left the offense a misdemeanor (Driggs
1988a, 1988b, 1990; Firmage and Mangrum 1988; Linford 1965).
That same year, Arizona prosecuted a half dozen Short Creek residents, aided by the LDS Church, which had earlier excommunicated
them. In a 4 April 1931 conference address, President Heber J. Grant
had stated the Church's position concerning prosecution:
We have been and we are willing to give such legal assistance as we legitimately
can in the criminal prosecution of such cases [new polygamy]. We are willing to
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
49
go to such limits not only because we regard it as our duty as citizens of the
country to assist in the enforcement of the law and the suppression of pretended
'plural marriages,' but also because we wish to make our attitude toward this
matter so clear, definite, and unequivocal as to leave no possible doubt of it in the
mind of any person, (in Clark 1970, 5:292-93)
Fundamentalists were convinced the 1935 Short Creek trials were engineered by local LDS leaders after the excommunications ("Heber"
1936). In the first twentieth-century convictions of fundamentalist Mormons, two men were sentenced to eighteen to twenty-four months in
the Arizona state prison.
Washington County, Utah, attempted more prosecutions in the
late 1930s (State v. Jessop 1940). The 8 March 1944 Salt Lake Tribune reported a major multi-state and federal government raid that led to the
arrests of almost fifty people, the eventual imprisonment of twentytwo of them, and publicity in such national publications as Time, Look,
Newsweek, and most major newspapers. Again, the Church publicly
applauded the raid. The following official statement appeared in the 8
March Salt Lake Tribune:
Since the manifesto by President Wilford Woodruff was adopted by the church
(on October 6, 1890), the first presidency and other general authorities have
repeatedly issued warnings against an apostate group that persisted in the practice of polygamous marriage, illegal both as to the church and the state. Members of the church who have let this warning go unheeded and have violated the
rule and doctrines of the church by entering into these illicit relationships have
been formally dealt with and excommunicated as rapidly as they could be found
out. This is the extreme punishment which the church can inflict.
Notwithstanding excommunication, some of these persons have persisted in
propagating their false ideas regarding the doctrine of plural marriage. Their
attitude is one of rebellion against the church. Their activities are unauthorized,
illegal and void.
We commend and uphold the federal government in the efforts through the
office of the United States district attorney and assisting agencies to bring before
the bar of justice those who have violated the law.
Church members also assisted in the prosecutions. The 2 October
Ogden Standard Examiner reported that Bishop Kasper Fetzer testified at
one of the trials that Church officials "sent me on a special mission to
try and save young people's souls from the clutches of the cult." Three
appeals from these prosecuted cases reached the United States Supreme
Court — Chatwin v. United States (1946), Cleveland v. United States (1946),
and Musser et al v. Utah (1948) —the first time religiously based polygamy had been considered there in this century.
Finally, in the big Arizona raid of 26 July 1953, almost three hundred people were taken into custody, and national publicity was extensive. Page one articles appeared in the Atlanta Constitution, the Dallas
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DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
Morning News, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and others.
Reports in the Arizona Republic and Deseret News noted that as a result
of the raid, twenty-seven Arizona men were placed on a short probation and over 160 children and their mothers remained in Arizona
foster homes for almost two years ("147 Receive" 1955; "Short Creek"
1955; Bradley 1990). A United States Senate subcommittee came to
Arizona in 1955 for largely unproductive investigative hearings, and
the Utah Supreme Court decided the legally notorious In Re Black
(1955) denying parental rights to fundamentalists who practice or advocate polygamy.
The last organized polygamy hunt came in 1955 when five men,
all of them "independents," were arrested ("Two Utah" 1955).
A TRADITIONAL COMMUNITY
Today fundamentalist Mormons can be found all over the old
Mormon Zion, with substantial congregations outside Mexico City and
in western Canada. There is even a small western European following. They are not a monolithic group. There are several organized
priesthood groups and perhaps an equal number of unaffiliated independents. A few remain active members of the LDS Church, keeping
a low profile about their fundamentalist sympathies. The two largest
organized groups are that based in Colorado City, which has a meeting house with seating for five thousand and which is presided over by
Rulon Jeffs, successor to Leroy Johnson. The other, presided over by
the grandfatherly Owen Allred, has its administrative base in Bluffdale, Utah, but has a congregation numbering in the hundreds outside
Mexico City and a united order community at Pinesdale, Montana.
The fundamentalist Mormon community in Southern Utah today
is primarily the United Effort Trust group at old Short Creek, now
known as Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. A smaller community near Cedar City affiliates with the Allred group. In the interest
of full disclosure, I should say that as an outside observer who has
visited several fundamentalist communities and been a guest in both
worship services and a number of homes, I am sympathetic to these
people, though I have reservations about some aspects of their community life. Let me offer a few personal observations.
Most Latter-day Saints have a difficult time being clear-headed
when it comes to fundamentalism. Years of hard feelings and emotional biases based on internal doctrinal differences and, to be honest,
embarrassment over polygamy, make objectivity difficult. A small
minority who call themselves fundamentalists have been violent, resulting in distorted stereotypes in the news of all fundamentalists. Main-
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
51
stream fundamentalism has no tradition of violence and no tolerance
for it. Perhaps we should put polygamy entirely aside for a moment
and consider the similarities of the fundamentalist Mormon community with other very traditional, socially conservative, and sincere religious communities. I find striking parallels with Old and New Order
Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and others in the Anabaptist tradition
(Hostetler 1974).
Fundamentalist Mormons are very traditional. Families and children are extremely important, indeed are the primary focus of community life. Divorce or, in the case of plural families, a "cancellation
of sealings," is frowned upon, though it does occur. Community sexual mores are very restrictive, beginning with extreme modesty in
dress and appearance.
For instance, accepted dress for women in Colorado City requires
plain dresses to the wrists, ankles, and neck to cover garments. Makeup and jewelry are frowned upon. Hair is worn long and in oldfashioned styles. Men wear shirts to the wrists and buttoned to the
neck, no matter what the season. I once attended Sunday worship services in Colorado City and counted only four men and boys out of
about two thousand in attendance not wearing plain white shirts. Men
wear their hair short and are always clean shaven. I'm told this style is
not doctrinal, but is social custom advocated by the late Leroy Johnson.
Even the discussion of sexual topics is considered inappropriate.
Men's and women's roles are very traditional and gender based, though
many women work competently outside of the home. Hard, honest
work, especially physical labor, is expected of everyone. Children are
taught to respect their parents and adopt the community's shared values.
As with any socially conservative community, fundamentalists have
their portion of teenaged rebellion, and I expect they always will have.
With some reservations about subjects and their application, education is admired and encouraged. A college education in what are
thought to be appropriate areas, usually practical fields such as business, education, or nursing, is thought to be a good thing. Many parents have proudly told me of their childrens' college study. Fundamentalist men and women seem to be no more or less educated than the
residents of other rural, modest-sized communities in the Great Basin.
Fundamentalists are aware of the "world" around them and carry
on a running debate about the problem of being in the world but not
of it. Crime, divorce, a perceived erosion of respect for authority and
patriotism, deviant sexuality, and declining honesty in our society are
the great threats they see for the nation as well as for their community.
They want no part of these evils and make conscious efforts to isolate
themselves from what they believe to be moral cancers.
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DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
Two examples may illustrate. Television has only recently found
its way into some homes in Colorado City. The few households with
TVs tend to draw neighbors who also want to watch. Many are less
than thrilled about this encroachment from the outside world. I suspect they fear less the electronic portrayal of monogamous households
than the sex, violence, disrespect, and rampant materialism that they
see there.
As a second example, the community has recently been involved
in considerable litigation over parental rights and other issues connected with their practice of religiously based polygamy.3 They have
retained very able lawyers outside the community to represent them,
most of them LDS bishops or stake officers. (I work with these lawyers
as a consultant and expert witness. I am sixth generation LDS with
a history of polygamy in my family.) Some of the leading cases that
will support arguments on behalf of the fundamentalists involve the
rights of homosexuals, lesbians, and other individuals whose conduct
fundamentalists object to very strongly. While lawyers see no reason
not to utilize these cases, the fundamentalists are most reluctant because
they so totally reject the conduct involved.
If all this sounds like what you might encounter in an outlying,
extremely conservative LDS stake, it should come as no surprise. We
are all part of the same religious tradition with the same root values.
We have much more in common than we have differences.
So how do fundamentalists differ from "regular" Latter-day Saints?
"They're the ones who practice polygamy, and they're not really Mormons anyway" is far too simple a response.
A 1963 master's thesis by John Day characterizes fundamentalist Mormonism as a protest against adaptation. I think that's pretty
much on the mark. The LDS Church we know today is so different
from nineteenth-century Mormonism that Brigham Young and John
Taylor would be hard-pressed to recognize it. The stress of legal
and social pressure from the rest of the nation, coupled with economic
and demographic pressures that resulted from great missionary success, made it virtually impossible for the nineteenth-century Church
to survive unchanged. Adaptations to these new realities were unavoidable, and Wilford Woodruffs 1890 Manifesto was only one of those
3
Those cases are: In the Matter of W.A. T. et al, 808 P.2d 1083 (Utah 1991) concerning the Fischer adoption; Williams et al v. United Effort Plan (No. 87-C-1022J, D.
Utah, United States District Court) concerning the partitian of the UEP trust; and
Barlow et al v. ALEOAC (No. CIV 91-838 PHX RCB, D. Arizona, United States
District Court) concerning the decertification of a polygamous law enforcement officer.
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
53
adaptations. It was neither the first nor the last, and it was not even
the greatest (Alexander 1986; Shipps 1984).
While many Church members had pushed for these changes, a
significant minority found them very unsettling. The vast majority of
men and women on both sides of the debate were principled and
sincere. Fundamentalism as we know it today has its roots among the
conservatives who resisted both these changes in the Mormon community and changes in the nation at large as it became more urban
and industrialized.
DOCTRINAL DIFFERENCES
Change and division brought with it new theological constructs
(see Musser 1980; Kraut 1989; Richardson 1988). Fundamentalists
consider themselves part of the LDS Church, living within special
priesthood organizations set apart to continue and preserve sacred
ordinances. In 1991 the Colorado City community incorporated itself in Utah as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, for the first time announcing its break with the Church
through a legal creation. Outside of these priesthood groups, independent polygamists, not surprisingly, are much less concerned with
direct lines of priesthood authority.
The priesthood councils believe that the temporal Church —the
popularly accepted Church —is not the head of the priesthood. To
them the leadership of the priesthood and the leadership of the Church
are not one in the same but were divided sometime after the death of
President John Taylor. According to this model, Ezra Taft Benson is
the head of the corporate body, but Rulon Jeffs or Owen Allred, depending on the fundamentalist affiliation, is the head of the priesthood.
The head of the priesthood is usually the senior member of the sevenmember Priesthood Council and as such enjoys the direct counsel and
guidance of God for his people.
As a consequence of this perception, fundamentalists do not
always view changes that come through the Church as proper and
binding. They do not recognize either the first or second manifesto
or the suspension of plural marriage. They also feel the Church is
"out of order," to use their phrase, in other significant ways. They
do not accept changes made since the administration of President
Joseph F. Smith in the temple ceremony or in the garment design.
They refer to "priesthood garments" rather than "temple garments,"
as most Mormons call them. This is more a concern of the Allred
group. (Many have stressed that they do not need to "sneak" into LDS
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DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
temples to perform their ordinances: they are concerned about proper
priesthood authority, rather than ordinances performed in a specific
place.)
Fundamentalists disagree with the Church's turn-of-the-century
suspension of a literal, physical gathering of Zion and with templebuilding outside of the old Zion. (The first temple opened outside the
Great Basin was the Hawaiian Temple, dedicated in 1919 by President Heber J. Grant.) They also reject the discontinuation of religious
communalism, such as the United Order efforts. All of the priesthood
groups attempt to continue some form of communalism, including the
United Effort Plan in Colorado City. In addition they reject the ordinations of blacks to the priesthood, what they refer to as the "Canaanite
Revelation."
Other disagreements include the present more worldly role of apostles in the Church; the discontinuation of the Adam/God theory; the
decision to stop sending missionaries out without purse or script; the
infallibility of the prophet, especially when he appears to modify doctrines introduced by Joseph Smith; and the Word of Wisdom as a law
rather than advisory counsel, a somewhat less tolerant position than
they embrace.
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
55
Seemingly small points can be especially telling. In both of the
large priesthood groups, prayers in worship services are often delivered by men with the right arm raised to the square. In the Allred
group worship services, only priests and Melchizedek priesthood holders bless and administer the sacrament. Water is passed in large glasses
or goblets, as in the last century. A Melchizedek priesthood holder
hands the bread or water to the member, who partakes and hands it
back to the priesthood holder, who in turn hands it to the next member. This is in contrast to the usual administration of the sacrament
in LDS sacrament meetings by the Aaronic priesthood, and the passing of sacrament trays down aisles from member to member. I have
never seen a woman speak in a worship service of the Colorado City
group.
Even with these and other differences, fundamentalist meetings
have a distinctly Mormon flavor. The congregation sings Mormon
hymns from LDS hymnals. Pictures of Joseph Smith and Jesus
Christ are in evidence. Speakers quote from the four standard works
but use just as frequently the Journal of Discourses and the Millennial
Star. Ezra Taft Benson might be quoted approvingly on some point,
and the Ensign might be used in a meeting hall or home. Everywhere there is the comfortable sort of atmosphere we find when a lay
clergy presides over meetings and delivers sermons. The language used
will be peculiarly Mormon.
PLURAL MARRIAGE
Then there is the issue of polygamy, or plural marriage as the
fundamentalists prefer to call it. For them polygamy is a pejorative
term that implies no priesthood authority. Though probably what fundamentalists are best known for, plural marriage certainly is not practiced by all fundamentalists and probably not even by a majority.
While romantic love is not necessarily the model for selection of
spouses in Colorado City, I am told the feelings of the parties involved
are taken into account. Marriages are most often arranged by parents
and the community's religious leaders, who believe they are guided by
divine inspiration. Sometimes this amounts to being sure that everyone in need of care is the responsibility of some priesthood holder. Not
all such marriages work, and when they don't, a cancellation of sealings, a kind of divorce, is granted. Sometimes, with their parents' permission, young people marry before they reach majority. Large age
gaps between husbands and wives are not uncommon. The Allred
group, in contrast, uses romance as a model, but always with the prior
approval of priesthood authorities.
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DIALOGUE: AJOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT
Children and large families are the norm, as they are considered
the primary reasons for marriage. It is my understanding that sexual
relationships between spouses are not considered proper unless children are possible (Bradley 1990).
Stereotypes about fundamentalist lifestyles are sometimes accurate
but frequently downright untrue. My experience with friends in Colorado City suggests that women are often reserved when they first encounter strangers, going through a stage of sizing the newcomer up. I
have women friends there who are outspoken and obviously strong
willed. Among them is Vera Black, the subject of In Re Black (1955),
who is personable, yet a strong presence. Even young women under
twenty, once they accept a newcomer in the community as a friend,
are not shy. The stereotype of the meek and submissive Colorado City
plural wife is simply off the mark in my experience. Most of their
young people today seem to understand that there are other lives to be
lived if they wish.
Polygamy in Colorado City may also serve as a distinct group
identification practice, just as it did for nineteenth-century Mormons.
It clearly identifies individuals as members of a distinct religious community; leaving the group and blending into the world become psychologically and socially difficult. Some religious historians believe this
was on Joseph Smith's mind when he introduced the doctrine (Moore
1982, 1986). When a group practice also draws persecution from the
world, group solidarity increases.
CONCLUSION
We can all benefit from religious tolerance. Because of our own
experiences of a century ago, Latter-day Saints should be prepared to
set the standard for tolerating the sincere religious views and practices
of others, even when we strongly disagree with them. We need not
accept practices without question, particularly those that may actually
injure unwilling participants. But we should never be eager to condemn practices that are a valid reflection of religious faith.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alexander, Thomas. Morrrwnism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints,
1890-1930.
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986.
Barlow, Daniel. Interview with the author, May 1989, Colorado City, Arizona. Audio
tape in the author's possession.
Bradley, Martha S. "The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953." DIALOGUE
23 (Summer 1990): 15-37.
Driggs: Twentieth-Century Polygamy
57
Bronson, Lorraine A. Winnie. Privately published typescript book, 1989.
Cannon, Kenneth L., II. "After the Manifesto: Mormon Polygamy 1890-1906."
Sunstone 8 (Jan.-April 1978a): 27-35.
. "Beyond the Manifesto: Polygamous Cohabitation Among LDS General
Authorities after 1890." The Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (Winter 1978b): 24-36.
Clark, James R. Messages of the First Presidency. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft Inc.,
1970.
Collier, Fred, and Knut Knutson, eds. The Trials of Apostle John W. Taylor and Matthias
F. Cowley. Salt Lake City: Collier's Publishing Co., 1987.
Day, John Marshall. "A Study of Protest to Adaptation." Unpublished thesis, University of Utah, 1963.
Driggs, Ken. "The Mormon Church-State Confrontation in Nineteenth Century
America." Journal of Church and State 30 (Spring 1988a): 273-89.
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